Cheeses, Parmesan, Blue, Camembert

For once there is a massive choice of cheeses all perfectly ripe for eating in the cheese fridge. We took samples of these to the Wine Tasting to be shared.

Despite all the background cheese making that occurs at HHF we don't always have a big cross section of cheeses ripening all once like this although probably should be goal.

Blue

Perfectly ready

The larger sized Camembert for slower ripening

Runny cetntres

15 months of age

Great texture and flavour

Ripe Near Me, NZ Compost Twin Bin, Parmesan

Accidently came across a useful web site Ripe Near Me which helps you find fresh produce in your locality. By clicking on the link you will see how easy it is to use. I suppose everybody else already knows about its existence and I'm just a bit slow. Jean got all excited when I showed her one entry for Black Australorp Fertilised eggs at a very good price and located not far away. Black Australorps are supposed to be very good egg layers bred for Australian conditions.

Finally getting a few backlog jobs out of the way. The wine press last used three months ago got its annual coat of paint. Just the base which is in contact with the acidic fruit juices needs to have a coat or two of non toxic paint otherwise the metal rusts and taints the juice (wine, Cider, Perry). It really doesn't take long just a quick rub with sandpaper to dislodge any loose old paint and a few brush strokes. But you know how it is, need to find a few spare minutes.

Basket Press Base

Getting very close to finishing the NZ twin compost bin. Today the dry assembly was completed to see if it all fitted together - which it did. The last steps are to relocated each section to the final resting place and apply a coat of oil for protection. The only part which hasn't been fully assembled is the rear panel. Because it is so large if all the boards were screwed on it was going to be too heavy to move. It will have the last five or six 9' boards screwed to it when in the final location. Once in situ and painted the various panels will be bolted together.  I'm busting to get started building the compost itself. This dual bin is a little larger at 4' 6" cubed rather than the usual 4'. Doesn't sound much but by my calculations that will be 50% more volume. Hope my expansion plans are not regrated when it comes to assembling the raw material.

The assembled Twin Bins

In the background the back panel has the middle section missing to reduce weight for transporting

And finally, made two more Parmesans using a slightly different recipe. Rather than make one large 3-4 kilogram cheese a smaller or in this case two smaller cheeses are moulded. The change in the recipe is quite minor. After cutting the curds there is 15 minutes of stirring, then stir for another 15 minutes while the temperature is raised to 42 C and finally another 15 minutes of stirring while the temperature goes to 51 C.

Small Parmesans

Because there were no small inserts for these moulds, two glass containers were used, Need to be gentle with the pressure though. The weight up top is to carry on with some pressure if the cheese compacts and the screw threads cease to apply pressure.

Making Camembert and Preserving Eggplant while waiting for the Camembert

Camembert is a pretty simple chees to make especially after you have done it a few times. Practice makes it simpler.

Today I used Cheeselinks Type B culture as opposed to Type A. Only because we had plenty in stock in the freezer. For some time I've used two white mould cultures which seem to ensure 100% success and a good end result.  They are Penicilium Candidum and Geotrichum Candidum

Our home made forms

Cake knife for cutting the curd

Filling the forms with a small sieve

Job done, will turn these a few times

Some of our forms a pretty tall. This is just so it takes up less space on the kitchen sink while draining. In the morning the taller cheeses will be sliced into two or more smaller cylinders before brining.

The time in the kitchen making cheese isn't fully occupied and Jean had pointed out that a miserable little Eggplant in the garden had produced a substantial crop of fruit. More than we could consume before over ripening.

Preserving the Italian Way by Pietro Demarco and Arnold Bonnet has been one of best finds in the preserving book world. Very simple and healthy methods without excessive salts, sugars or over cooking. And flavoursome.

Red wine Vinegar

We used a recipe we had tried before and made three small jars which will be excellent ether as adjuncts to some cheese or as topping to a Winter pizza.

There was no white wine vinegar about and I used Red Wine Vinegar instead. One of the by products of wine making is there are always some failures to turn into vinegar.

New Cheese, Hot Sauce, Mustard and people who can grow seedlings

About every five days we collect milk from a local dairy in a 20 litre container. Usually we bottle between 5 and 9 litres for drinking ourselves, the cats and dogs. That leaves between 12 and 16 litres for something else. If you do the math it doesn't seem to add up but that's because the container holds 21 litres when absolutely full.

Sometimes the excess is used for yogurt but mostly it goes towards a cheese. The standard inventory in the cheese fridge is Fetta, Haloumi, Parmesan, soft Blue and a variety of hard cheeses. Most of these  hard cheeses are Cheddars or Havarti. Occasionally (as time permits) we experiment with a flavoured cheese such as peppercorns or caraway. While making wine in February some grape marc was used to store an existing cheese to observe the results. This turned out well with the distinct winey flavour permeating the Havarti. The Hispanico from three months ago was OK but a bit dry. A Colby from last year was tasty. Yesterday being a bit short of time and in the experimental mood a hard cheese was knocked out using a combination of starter cultures selected on the basis that they hadn't been used much and the process was a mix of the Havarti steps and whatever fitted into the day's schedule. The curd looks good and it will be an interesting cheese to try when it matures.

Pressing



Brining

One of the milder Chilli bushes was loaded with large red chillies and finally while Jean was away the harvest was turned into a chilli sauce. Or will become a chilli sauce. The recipe calls for a pureeing of the chillies with a little salt and allowing it to ferment before adding vinegar to taste for storage. Just an interesting experiment.

Fermenting Chillies

The MP3 player has been working overtime playing podcasts of Radio National's First Bite. The episode on Mustard struck a cord and fortunately having a large container of Brown Mustard seeds worked in well with the recipe which was just seeds soaked in Red Wine Vinegar for a couple of days and then run in a blender for a time. The blender didn't completely puree the seeds leaving a gritty mustard. After a couple of days to age the tasting was impressive. Strong full flavoured mustard nothing like a shop bought product. Last night it went well with the Falafels.

First Mustard attempt

Falafels of a sort

Being impressed by this first result and just by chance having a book on mustard in our home library another recipe is being attempted. A fully fledged Dijon. Now this is the difficult part, the herb and spice cupboard didn't quite come to the party. We didn't have Chervil or Tarragon but the cupboard yielded the other dozen or so ingredients. Some of the items used were freshly grated as there was no dried equivalent but in the end we have a batch of stuff soaking in the last of our Verjuice from a few vintages ago.

Dijon of a sort soaking

A friend down the road rang to say she had too many late season Tomatoes and would we want a few. "Yes please". She is organic and has a large greenhouse where she raises her vegetables. We called in for the obligatory morning tea before collecting the Tomatoes.  Then we noticed her seedling raising bench groaning with every type of Autumn vegetable. Including two large trays of Onion seedlings.

"How do you do it".

"I just chuck them into the tray with some soil mix".

Of course we left with a few seedlings as well.

We all seem to have strengths in different areas. Raising seedlings is not one of ours. I wonder if she would be interested in taking payment in wine for more seedlings?

A selection of seedlings

Just realised what a full day we had. A trip to the pool in the morning. A quick drive across the river to move cows, after morning tea Jean went harrowing while I mowed the lawns and then went down to the pool for a second time to annoy the pool manager with 40 more laps and a busy afternoon in the kitchen. Some days are just really productive.

Slept well.

The Things We Keep

Years ago before the Internet whenever we read an interesting article on a topic that attracted us we would either keep the article or photocopy the section that drew our attention. Over time there is a build up of material and because there is a filing cabinet they find their way into the cabinet under some heading or another.

In recent years it became obvious that it was easier to research a topic via our own extensive collection of books, the public library and the Internet. The filing cabinet of documents becoming largely redundant. Gradually a review of this collection of suspension folders has been occurring and much material is finding its way into either compost, recycling or reused as note paper before joining the previous two homes.

Anything that is extremely rare and worth keeping which isn't much joins a binder and is held in place with a plastic pocket.

One such binder is on cheese making. It contains many recipes for making cheeses and technical articles on the process.

This morning by chance over Green Tea (being a fast day that is all we get) I reviewed an article from the filing cabinet before deciding its fate.

 

These are extracts. I'd love to give attribution but there is no indication of source on the photocopy to help.

“Rennet works best when milk is warm and contains soluble calcium. Milk naturally contains calcium in a soluble form, but if it is boiled or heated to a high temperature this calcium becomes insoluble, and rennet will not work. “

“Pasteurisation also kills most of the lactic acid-producing bacteria in milk”

“In the past acid-curd cheese was traditionally made from milk which had gone sour. However, this was raw milk which soured 'normally'. It is not advisable to use pasteurised milk which has soured or gone off for cheese making or in cooking. Pasteurized milk keeps for longer because nearly all the lactic acid bacteria are destroyed by the heat treatment. If it does go 'off' this may be caused by the growth of other bacteria which could be harmful. It is wiser to throw such milk away.”

 

I'd have to dispute the claim that pasteurised milk keeps longer with the exception of UHT milk. Our raw milk keeps well for 10 days. And why would you put UHT milk into your body?

So what was the point in introducing pasteurisation to milk? A conscious effort to increase Osteoporosis or provide a medium for dangerous bacteria?

Uses for Grape Marc

A final clean up of the Cave today as part of the end of vintage. The last job was to break down the basket press and perform a thorough clean. There are still some pears and apples maturing in the orchard and the press will receive additional work between now and the end of April. After that it gets a coat of non toxic paint to the base plate and is put aside for another year.

Just as the grape marc was about to be tossed into the compost there was a pause and some light globes (LED) went off. There was the faint memory of a cheese we had seen at Simon Johnson's shop more than a decade ago. It was a cheese that had been stored in grape marc. We obviously tried a piece and found it interesting.

Grape Marc

After a quick check on the web a few options were uncovered.

Grape Marc Aged Tomme

here was a Havarti in the cheese fridge from last October that we felt was a bit dry. It went into a container shrouded in marc with a bit of freshly pressed wine. And as a proper test a nicer cheddar like cheese was also covered in marc and stored. These will stay like that for 2-3 months.

In Europe cheeses like this are made and stored for a period of months then coinciding with the end of vintage they are brought out and shrouded in grape marc for 3-4 months before consumption.

Just in case any of these cheeses turn out fabulous a few jars of marc were frozen. No need to wait until next vintage for the ingredients.

We finally caught up with a nearby farmer who had a stack of mulch silage round bales for sale at $30/~ton. We met up with him at 2.30 and loaded the ute and trailer as a bonus he chucked on a third bale as a bit of compensation for having to wait so long (at no extra cost). By good fortune we'd brought along a jar of our creamed honey as gift. Good swap. It always pays to sweeten a deal whenever possible.

Picking up Ideas

It's useful to read other people's blogs. Reflecting on some adjustments we have made to doing things around HHF in recent times it highlighted how sharing knowledge has improved our own activities.

Most recently Paola Spades and Spoons wrote about wine making. In one post she mentioned the volume of preservative used in their wine in terms of grams/litre. Our measurements are done in ppm. Out of curiosity a conversion was performed and it showed a big discrepancy with HHF being on the high side. It turns out our winemaking notes were incorrect, fortunately because we calculate the additive on the litres not the kilograms the discrepancy was not as bad as it could have been. Our notes are now modified.

Gavin Webster's Little Green Cheese  published a podcast on brining. What to do with brine once you've salted the cheese has always been a problem at HHF. As we make so much cheese i.e. twice each week there is always the issue of brine disposal. Not any longer the podcast provided a solution for the brine - clean and reuse.

Liz at Eight Acres is always throwing forward interesting ideas and trying new things. Her permaculture posts are thought provoking and have encouraged us at HHF to rethink our processes. Her last post on deodorant is particularly poignant as it has been a couple of months now since soap or shampoo graced my body. I'm curious to see if Liz will take the next big step.

These are just three recent examples of benefitting from the willingness of others to document their knowledge and experiences.

Many other bloggers post interesting and thought provoking pieces and sometimes they are just good reads or listens.

Linda at Greenhaven 
Dani at Eco Footprint South Africa
Matron of Husbandry at Throwback from Trapper Creek
Fiona at Life at Arbordale Farm
Barb at Barb's Backyard
Jack at The Survival Podcast

As with all things not every post from HHF is useful, interesting, relevant or even well written but the objectives remain unchanged. To document what we do as a record for ourselves as well as offering the information to others in case they find it helpful. In each post we attempt to improve our writing skills. They say it takes 10,000 hours to get good at something, don't know if that is really true but we continue to practice.

Wine Making with Chardonnay

Most of today was spent working on the three batches of Chardonnay.

Batch 1 (B1) was pretty straightforward. It was all juice and the only job this morning after leaving overnight to chill down to below 10 C was to run it through another finer sieve. There was a lot of sediment in the bottom of the demijohn which was added to B2. I didn't bother filtering it as B1 was at the 10 litre mark and it didn't need any more volume.

B3 was still in the freezer at 10 C it will be 2 am tomorrow morning before it reaches 36 hours on skins. Having worked out that it meant getting out of bed there was some thought about doing it later today and making the test closer to 24 hours or leaving it until normal wake up time and making it 40 + hours. We will see what happens.

B2 needed pressing in the basket press. As there were other jobs to do elsewhere it was an ideal opportunity to do the right kind of pressing i.e. very slow. This slow method means less of the bitter parts of the skin are released. So all day it was just a few clicks on the handle of the press using just finger tip pressure.

As the juice came out and the pressure relieved it was onto the other tasks. Measuring out the yeast getting it ready to rehydrate. A sample of juice s raised to between 35 and 38 C and the yeast added. Once it has started bubbling the temperature is lowered with cold juice a little at a time and the yeast allowed to bubble again. Never more than a 10 C change in any one step. Once the yeast is working at a temperature within 10 degrees of the pressed juice it is added. The slow pressing meant the pressed juice was gradually rising in temperature and it need to be at or above the planned fermentation temperature of 15 C.

Also tested was the pH which came in at 3.55. The ideal pH is between 3 and 3.5. Aim was taken at the midpoint t3.25. To get there Tartaric Acid the largest acid type in grapes needed adding. There is a simple formula to achieve the desired result. After checking and double checking the calculations the acid was stirred into the demijohn. The calculation is a little tricky for B2 as the grapes are still being pressed and the final volume is only an estimate based on previous years yields. But by choosing a mid point there is some wiggle room.

When B1 started fermenting comfortably it went into the freezer at 15 C. B2 because of the much larger volume will not see much activity until the early hours of tomorrow morning.

Measuring out the yeast required

pH meter

Getting some juice at the correct temperature to rehydrate the yeast

Pressing Chardonnay B2

While waiting between applications of more pressure other jobs got some attention including a few trips across the river to setup and then fix an irrigator that was playing up. And which continued to play up. At least one patch of ground got a very good watering.

And the baby Roquefort needed the final application of salt.

Weigh each cheese and calculate the 2% salt and pour on top

Five little Roquefort altogether

Just after lunch confirmation was received that the Pinot Noir would be ready for picking on Monday next. This meant tomorrow (Friday) was free - well sort of.

 Our Chambourcin was close to picking. A couple of rows had readings of 21 Brix but lower down the slope the readings went much higher varying between 23 and 25. The aim was to get a final Brix of 23 to 24 if possible.

With the windfall spare day it was decided to pick at least the ripest rows and chill the fruit. Jean reminded me that our thermometer was showing 42 C. Much higher than the forecast.

Slow and steady picking and lots of water and breaks resulted in all but one row being harvested. The volume is greater than last year by about 20%. We can put that down to two factors. The first is the near absence of bird damage. The lack of bird damage was also mentioned when the Chardonnay was picked. This seems a valley wide phenomena this vintage.

The second factor is just a perfect season. Steady sunshine, good flowering and fruit set and a little added water at the appropriate times. Some vines had lovely full bunches. Something we don't often get at HHF on our rocky outcrop.

One last increase of pressure on the ongoing B2 and off to bed. Lets see whether passion for wine making will see a 2 am rising.

Hispanico (Cows milk Manchego), Harvesting Onion and Garlic

Time to try something different in the cheese making area. Came across this recipe on NECMSC. It looked pretty simple and having tried Manchego a few times in the past it went on our list of things to try. The process turned out to be very straight forward. We haven't been using the heavy duty cheese press of late but with a block of cheese this size it came in handy especially as the pressing process involved different pressures at various timings. Gauging the pressures was a bit of a guess. 5KG is easy as that is the exact weight of the metal door stop. But 10 KG was a shot in the dark i.e. the screws turned down a bit and 30 KG was the screws turned down a lot. In hindsight maybe making a couple of smaller ones might have been a better idea so that tasting them at different ages would be easier but sometimes it's just nice to have a big wheel for aesthetics.

There was a bit of stirring involved but as luck would have it a handy book and the art of reading and stirring work well. Stirring, coffee, Christmas cake and reading is a touch more difficult but can be achieved.

Some of the alliums were ready in particular the one called French Shallot which looks like a bunching onion. It keeps really well. We used the last one only two weeks ago. They are also exceedingly strong flavoured. Definitely eye watering material. This years crop did not contain the larger sized bulbs that came last year. Our assumption is that weather conditions were a little different and not ideal. It could also have been that the compost used was not up to scratch but we don't think so. Sometimes nature has a little mystery. Still the quantity was good enough and there will be plenty to use as seed stock this coming July.

 

 

The last of the garlic was pulled as well. Again the quality was not present. The odd good corm but nowhere near as good as last year. It just didn't bulb up. Normally we would have finished harvesting in November so this is more than a month late. Still there will be enough across all the varieties to keep us going. Especially now that we have started freezing some of the crop to prevent it shooting before the next years crop is ready.

 

 

We finished the day by sitting in and around a friends swimming pool having a drink and chatting about the world, books and every thing else. Something we plan to do more of in 2014.

Weeding, Mozzarella, Tomato Puree

Finally a cool day. A steady breeze blew across the valley and with the humidity it felt like a cool sea breeze. Making the most of the conditions the various bean beds received a weeding. Weeding is something we are not good at performing. Not so much the action but the regularity of the activity. The measure of out laziness was the number of barrows of weeds that went into the compost. At least today we got a start with all the bean beds finished and a good watering afterwards. Hopefully this will provide the inspiration to complete some of the other vegetable beds. The problem is that having taken a few days to relax and read a pile of books it becomes increasingly more difficult to venture out and get stuck into the many outside tasks.

Originally the plan for today was to make the cows milk version of Manchego known as Hispanico. But Jean wanted some Mozzarella for a dish in tonight's meal. It is the last supper for her mum who is catching a late night bus back to Stanthorpe. And so Mozzarella it is. I did cheat and read a few chapters during some of the shorter steps but managed to get other tasks finished or started. The recipe followed was from Neil and Carol Willman's book Home Cheesemaking.

 

A lot of Mozzarella

 

Since we are going to have a lot of Mozzarella it seemed necessary to make up some sour dough pizza base to be used in tomorrow nights meal which surprisingly is going to be pizza. Probably the best time of year for pizza since there is so much fresh produce in the garden which is suitable for the dish.

 



Pizza base dough mixed and souring overnight

 

Jean and her mum spent a productive hour in the Tomato bed harvesting enough fresh tomatoes for me to puree and bottle. Getting lazier every year. This time the tomatoes were sliced in half to confirm there were no grubs and stuffed into a heavy based pot on low heat. Once there was some semblance of liquid in the bottom a bit more stuffing occurred and then the mix broken up a little more with the stick blender. The entire batch was brought to a slow rolling boil and the stick blender poked about to ensure no oversize pieces that might block the funnel. The bottles for filling were just a collection accumulated from various sources. They have been processed through the dishwasher for sterilisation and the heat from the sauce will now be enough to ensure nothing nasty happens. We still have plenty left over from last year and this years meagre harvest will have little impact on our stores.

 

One of our best acquisitions many years ago is this simmering pot which has a really thick base and nothing ever burns or sticks

A motley collection of jars but they work and more importantly get used more than once before recycling. Always seems a waste to use a new jar only once or buy jars when so many are thrown out.

 

 

Getting back to normal, Bees, Halloumi

It was well after midday before we started getting back to normal at HHF. The previous day our northern friends returned and the four of us attended the funeral of a mutual friend. As previously mentioned housework is not the greatest priority for us. The short notice resulted in a 4am start  to prepare the house for visitors and ensure their overnight stay would be comfortable. A meal was partially pre-prepared as we assumed it would be a long day and we may not feel like cooking on such a sad occasion. It was amazing how much housework we completed in 4 hours.

The large church was packed as you would expect for a person who came from a big family and then there were the many friends and of course all teachers touch the lives of such a large number of students. Always sad to see the end of a life early and suddenly.

The four of us retreated to HHF and ate, drank and talked until late into the evening. Then spent the morning breakfasting and talking. We hadn't seen each other for more than 5 years and there was a lot of ground to cover. A warm farewell at 1pm and we went back to normality.

Normality involved robbing the hive. The girls had excelled themselves and not only filled every frame but were scratching around for space and started building comb in any free corner. Originally the plan was to take only 6 frames but the accelerated activity resulted in removing 8 frames. Two full frames left behind just in case. I processed 4 frames immediately and returned them to the hive so that the girls could start the clean up process.

 

Overloaded frames

The rarely used spinner needed a good clean



A full frame

We don't over filter. Just a simple sieve to keep out the worst of the chunks

Both of us were working in the cave. Jean churning cultured cream into butter. We thought we understood what causes the cream to turn. But not so. This batch took forever. Possibly because we didn't have time to churn earlier the cultured cream had been placed in the fridge after 24 hours for an extra couple of days before we finally had time to attend to it. 

In the kitchen there was a batch of haloumi being formed on the stove. After renneting, cutting and stirring the curds were draining on the sink and the whey was slowly coming to temperature for the final step. I ducked across the river to setup the irrigation for an overnight run leaving Jean to finish off.

 

Draining haloumi curds

And the finished product cooling before brining

 

After returning from setting up irrigation the last 4 frames were processed and being late the stickies were left for a morning insertion. The harvest was good with two stainless steel buckets well filled.

 

The capping's draining

The comb after spinning



 The frames after spinning

Two buckets well filled



Say 7 litres per bucket?

 

And then finally sit down, glass of HHF 2013 sparkling Semillon accompanied by smoked salmon trimmings and enjoy a really good DVD “The Help”. A wonderful tearful film.